Meghan Markle Recounts the First Time She Met Kate Middleton

The first three episodes of Harry & Meghan, the new docuseries about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's love story, focus on the couple meeting, falling in love, and the lead up to their royal wedding. Part of their relationship timeline included meeting each other's families—which, for Meghan, meant meeting the royal family, and Prince Harry's brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate Middleton.

"It's so funny if I look back at it now, because now I know so much, and I'm so glad I didn't then," Meghan shares with a laugh, "because I could just authentically be myself without so much preparedness."

She recounts, "Even when Will and Kate came over, and I had met her for the first time... They came for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot. I was a hugger, always been a hugger. I didn't realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits." Harry & Meghan episode two is the first time Meghan shared publicly her experience of meeting Kate, though she does not specify when the meeting happened.

During their engagement interview with the BBC, Prince Harry said, "I'd been seeing her for a period of time when I literally didn't tell anybody at all. And then William was longing to meet her and so was Catherine. So, you know, being our neighbors we managed to get that in a couple of—well, quite a few times now and Catherine has been absolutely amazing." To which Meghan adds, "She's been wonderful." Harry continues, "William as well, you know, fantastic support."

In Harry & Meghan, Meghan goes on to talk about how she was surprised to learn that how the royals present themselves to the public is not entirely dissimilar from how they are in their private lives. She shares that after that dinner, "I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside. That there is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and you go, 'Oh, great. Okay, we can relax now.' But that formality carries over on both sides, and that was surprising to me."

In the third episode, Meghan talks about what spending Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham was like. "I remember so vividly the first Christmas at Sandringham," she says. "Calling my mom, and she's like, 'How's it going?' And I said, "Oh my gosh, it's amazing.' It's just like a big family, like I always wanted. There was just this constant movement and energy and fun."

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